seem to recall seeing a few of these still in operation in Westphalia between Aachen & Koln when I lived there a few years back.. (circa 97') That platform/foyer area near the doors was especially nice because I could put my bicycle there for early morning rides out in the countryside...

Schlieren cars have electric heat, not steam. May have had steam at some point, but there aren't any locomotives with a steam boiler any more, not even in museums. Only the Polish cars and locos have steam heat.

Just for everyone's curiosity, old railway cars in New South Wales, of the steam pulled variety use a 32VDC lighting system. The bulbs are conventional B22 base GLS style. The lights run off lead acid batteries charged by a generator belt driven from one of the axles. These cars were in use until the early 80's on outer suburban and rural lines, though by then pulled by a diesel or electric loco. The first generation of suburban electric trains appearing in Sydney in 1926 also used a 32VDC system with batteries, but in this case a rotary converter was used to charge them off the 1500VDC traction supply. These trains were in use until 1993. In the late 50's the first generation of electric interurban trains used the same system but 120VDC, with B22 based GLS light bulbs and each car had a pair of fans at the end of the passenger compartment. The next design of suburban cars appearing in the mid 60's which is still used, consists of a rotary converter producing 3phase 415V 50 cycles which powers the air conditioning and conventional 240V fluorescent lights. There is a rotary converter charged 120V battery backup which continuously feeds a few light fittings in each car. The fluorescent tubes are 40W. An electronic inverter powers the 120V fittings. The latest designs appearing in the late 80's do much the same thing, except electronic inverters are used instead of the motor generators.I'm not familiar with other states, but apart from Victoria which also uses a 1500v DC traction supply, the electrified systems use high voltage AC.

Austrian Standard traction voltage is 15kV 16 2/3 Hz. Actually I don't know the voltage of the lighting system, but it's 16 2/3 Hz.Vienna subway and streetcar (tramway) cars run on various voltages DC. Standard streetcar is 650V DC nominal. The oldest cars ran 120V light bulbs with ES27 screw threads in series, then fluorescent tubes and light bulbs in series (I think 220V fluoros and 120V bulbs, later converted to 220V bulbs). Rotary inverters existed too, but mostly for converting the 600V DC to 24V DC for the controls like door control, trailer emergency brake,...From the late 1970ies on cars had solid state inverters to power 220V fluorescent lighting.The old metropolitan railway of vienna ran on 750V DC and the cars had 95V bulbs wired in series. Directly replaced with solid state inverter cars (the cars were built in 1925, rebuilt using some parts of the old cars, like most of the electric part in 1954-1961 and taken out of service in 1983). New cars were bought from 1980-89 and are still in service.

Mid 1990's we bought the secondhand diesel railcars ,ADK, ADL type from Perth ( Australia ) to be used in Auckland.

In New Zealand we have been importing some of the Mark 1 ?? railwaycars from the UK. These get completely stripped down and look like new after been refurbished for the Auckland suburban Push Pull trains with dieselelectric locomotives. They have an on board generator 200 kVA which provides 230 / 400 Volts 50 Hz for lighting and auxillaries.Also the bogies have been replaced to fit the 3 ft 6 gauge used in NZ. These have been put into service over the last few years.

I also recall that old railway cars were imported from Australia to be used for subbie duties in Auckland as above. VOLTAGES:Main trunk from Te Rapa to Palmerston North 25,000 V 50 Hz. Wellington suburban 1500 V dc.Trams in Wellington and Christchurch 500 V dc.

Not to worry you unnecessarily, but Mark 1 coaches are banned from public service here as they are not an integral constructed unit. i.e. in a crash the coach can sheer away from the underframe crushing the passengers inside.

They're a very old design (50s/60s)

Coaches of similar design crashed in Ireland in the early 1980s and failed catastrophically crushing people inside.

There were 4 generations of "intercity" coaches: unimaginately named by British Rail Engineering as Mark 1 thru Mark 4.

Mark 3 runs happily at 125mph (these are also common in Ireland) Mark 4, slightly faster.These two models still make up the backbone of intercity services in the British isles.. although that's changing as newer fleets come online.

Since BR was privatised, it's manufacturing division merged into other major companies e.g. Bombardier, Alstom etc etc. So, the "mark" technologies are now merged into other products.

Ireland uses the rather odd 1600mm / 5ft3in Irish gauge over all 2300km of public railways.

All long distance trains are diesel-electric hauled/push-pull or DMU (Diesel multiple units) i.e. each carriage has its own engine.

Electrification:Dublin suburban (DART) : 1500V DCTramways: 750V DC

As for the intercity services on-board power:The newest locomotives are capable of delivering 230/400V 50Hz "Head End Power", however, this feature is only used by the Dublin-Belfast "Enterprise" fleet and has proven to be unreliable. The loco has to constantly run at high revs to keep power to the lighting/air conditioning and it has resulted in reliability problems and locos suffering from excessive wear.

The rest of the fleet, including the brand new Cork-Dublin express fleet all have a generator car seperate from the locomotive. This provides 230/400V 50Hz to feed lighting, heating, air conditioning, power outlets for passengers' laptops, on-board systems, automatic doors, etc etc. This arrangement has been the norm here for decades.

DMU trains, which will make up most of the fleet soon, generate their own power in each coach with a small underfloor diesel generator. Apart from the high speed push-pull services between Dublin and Belfast and Dublin and Cork the rest of the fleet is being replaced by DMUs built by Mitsui of Japan. So, all the trainspotters (railfans) will be rather upset as old and not-so old coaches and diesel locos go to the scrappers to be replaced with "boring" computerised Japanese-built DMUs with all the character of a Toyota. I on the otherhand, will be glad to see the back of the 1960s/70s crocks!

All trains have a battery back up UPS style system in each carriage to provide emergency power to the automatic doors and basic lighting should the generator fail / become disconnected.